“If you compare two people, one with a higher muscle mass than the other, the BMR or basal metabolic rate is higher is the person with more muscle,” says Vice President of the Australian Medical Association (AMA), Dr Tony Bartone.

Well, to put it bluntly, no. In reality, it’s not going to make a huge difference to your overall body transformation. “This higher BMR contributes to only a portion of weight loss,” explains Bartone.

Essentially, weight loss is about controlling lifestyle factors, monitoring your food and getting decent exercise. There are a few elements which can help assist these three main elements, including genetic and gendered predispositions as well as size variations (the amount of muscle you carry).

“If your aim is losing weight then increasing muscle mass is going to be helpful but it’s the exercise in increasing this muscle that’s the most helpful,” he says.

Bartone adds that a mix of exercise, diet and lifestyle improvements are more likely to contribute to ongoing weight maintenance rather than focusing on bulking up. “You don’t want to yo-yo”.

So yes, resistance exercise is going to do you a world of good. But, once you’ve built that muscle it’s not an invitation to sit in your pants on the couch eating copious amounts of brownies thinking your body is doing the work for you. Unless that sounds like exactly what you want to do, of course.